Cracow Indological Studies

Front Matter

2023-12-29

Back Matter

2023-12-29

In Lieu of Introduction

Cezary Galewicz — 2023-12-29

No abstract is avaliable for this article.

The Veda and the Patronage Economy of the Hindu Temple

Cezary Galewicz — 2023-12-29

The ambiguous relationship between the Veda and Hinduism has attracted considerable scholarship. So have recent cases of revival and redesigning of Vedic ritualism. Much less has been written on the concepts, forms and actual practices of the coexistence of temple ritual and the Veda within the territory of the Hindu temple. This relationship, by no means homogenous and not easy to articulate, must often have been problematic while engaging issues of identity, eligibility, agency, economy and power. It remains relevant to contemporary national Hinduism and political scene. From the early years of temple Hinduism, the presence of the Veda in the Hindu temple depended on a dynamic process of inclusion and exclusion with prestige game, status aspiration and competition among ritual agents. To make sense of this relationship, the essay proposes a historically in-formed perspective set against a background of regional patterns of pat-ronage and temple economy while addressing a variety of such relation-ships from historical Malabar (today‘s Kerala) with a focus on the temple ritual of vāraṃ.

Tumuli Stones, Sacred Geography, and Meditation Halls for Mantra

Keith Edward Cantú — 2023-12-29

This article examines how the patronage of tumuli, belief in sacred geography, the institution of meditation halls, and the practice of mantra at these halls converged in Tamil Nadu at the turn of the 19th century to facilitate a pan-sectarian Tamil “consensus” on yoga in the literature of Sri Sabhapati Swami (Capāpati Cuvāmikaḷ, b. 1828). The article begins by analyzing the phenomenon of tumuli (Tamil jīva-camāti) among Sabhapati’s gurus in the line of Kumara Devar (Kumāratēvar), as well as his own students. It then shows how such a phenomenon was intertwined with the mythology of Agastya and the Tamil Siddhas via Sabhapati’s other guru line. Consideration is also given to the role of mantra in these tumuli and their accompanying “Meditation Halls” (maṭālayams). The article concludes by claiming that intersections between tumuli sites, yoga, and mantra warrant more attention given their ability to attract emotional investment and financial patronage from various levels of society.

King, Kinglessness and an Oral Poem

Abhilash Malayil — 2023-12-29

The essay discusses an oral poem from north Malabar detailing an 18th-century event of political conflict, manifested between a native king and a local landlord. The story of conflict centres around the idea of bhēdam or difference that the king wanted to project as the secret of his earthly right to rule. The king’s opponent, the local landlord, rejects this idea and claims that they are equals, and there exists no hierarchy of relation between them. The essay explores certain features of the late 18th century political transition along the Coast of Malabar which culminated in the Mysore and British rule, and argues that the landlord’s denial of king’s authority was firmly rooted in this context, and had futurist intentions. In this way, the essay also tries to present a critique of the neo-Hocartian idea of “little-kingdom” and the Proppian proposal for “pattern morphology”. It indicates that the early modern Malabar presents an interesting case of ‘hollowing’ the crown from inside, and its oral poems—as a genre of history—document this process in modes that are deemed appropriate to their times.

The Patronage of Literary Criticism

Fabio Mangraviti — 2023-12-29

The present work is inspired by previous contributions to the development of the Hindi public and print spheres in the 19th century (Dalmia 1997; Orsini 2002; Stark 2007). It aims at extending and integrating previously elaborated presentations by focusing on the patronage provided by colonial institutions to the development of Hindi literary studies in the 1870s and 1880s. The study also considers the role played by Indian sampradāys in enacting the religious and intellectual processes underwriting the expansion of this field. By moving in this direction, the article mainly builds on the investigation of some biographies (jīvnī) of the North Indian devotional poets penned by Bhārtendu Hariścandra in the 1870s. Further, it explores the relationship between these biographies and the anthologies published in the mid-1870s by the Naval Kishor Press. The final section of the contribution provides an introductory analysis of the type of patronage extended to Hariścandra and his works by the Khadgavilas Press in the 1880s. The aim is to draw a comparison between the policies of some earlier private publishing enterprises and those pursued by the new, Hindu-oriented publishing enterprises.

Damage Management

Libbie Mills — 2023-12-29

Jīrṇoddhāra replacement and repair of icons and the buildings that house them is an essential part of the full ritual of worship. Ritual officiants are there to ensure the procedure is carried out correctly, but it is the yajamāna, the patron, who must initiate the task, act as its host, and fund it. The paper considers Jīrṇoddhāra and the yajamāna’s role in it, as presented by the Devyāmata.

Poetry and Legitimacy at the Mughal Court

Oskar Podlasiński — 2023-12-29

The present paper proposes to take a new look at the imperial Mughal court’s pattern of patronage of arts and letters as a vital and indispensable component of the imperial state machinery on the one hand and an instrument of historical change on the other. It focuses on, and draws from, Čahār čaman, a mid-17th-c. work by Chandar Bhan Brahman, one of the prominent figures among poets, writers, scribes and secretaries in Mughal service; a person involved in the never-ending, and aesthetically intricate, ceremonial exchange of goods, honors, acts of refined praise and proofs of recognition that not only made up the rich and variegated courtly milieu of the period but also gave form and actively shaped the ethos of the Mughal state’s pattern of self-representation—all in the service of legitimating the imperial power and its expanding claim over increasingly vaster stretches of the Indian subcontinent and its regional rulers and their riches. The same was done in the garb of sophisticated aesthetics of imperial power that demanded rulers, princes, prominent chiefs and officers, executive clerks, accountants and administrative professionals to communicate and ever prove anew their status and position in the language and manners recognized as aesthetically pleasing and in the form requiring literary, if not poetical, skills and competence based on knowledge of recognized expressive forms and appropriate genres as well as individual talent and personal ambition.

Unworthy Recipients and the Mercy of God

Jarosław Zapart — 2023-12-29

This article examines the ideology of gift in the Sant hagiographies (paracaī) of Anantadās (16th/17th century). It is assumed that understanding author’s implicit view of gift giving (dāna) is fundamental to unraveling the meaning of certain episodes of the paracaīs. These involve curious cases such as that of Kabīr abandoning his dāna-related duties or those of various Sants, for example, Pīpā, offering gifts to the brahmins (who are, nevertheless, depicted mainly as enemies of the bhakts). The approach of Anantadās to dāna seems to differ significantly from the ideas expounded by the medieval Brahmanic, Buddhist, and Jain sources as it transcends the notion of the gift as being motivated by the socioreligious status of the recipient. It also proves the existence of a certain God-bhakt reciprocity. As such, dāna works on a soteriological level, as a devotional act aimed at creating a relationship with Hari, and on a proselytic level as a tool for expanding the religious community.

Elisa Ganser, Theatre and Its Other: Abhinavagupta on Dance and Dramatic Acting. Leiden, Boston: Brill. 2021. Gonda Indological Studies 23.XII, pp. 412. ISBN9789004449817 (hardback).—Reviewed by Halina Marlewicz

Halina Marlewicz — 2023-12-29